From the Publisher : Jean Elshtain examines how the myths of Man as "Just Warrior" and Woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars.

Includes index.

Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction : Beautiful souls / just warriors : the seduction of war -- 1. Not-a-soldier's story : an exemplary tale -- Child of the 1950s : images of war and martyrdom -- Growing up of a political theorist -- Part 1. Armed Civic Virtue. 2. Discourse of war and politics : from the Greeks to today -- Taming Homer's warrior : Plato and Aristotle -- Ideal republic : Machiavelli and Rousseau -- Resistance to the republic of armed virtue -- Women on Rousseau's discourse : Mary Wollstonecraft -- Nation-State -- Hegel's vision of the State -- Clausewitz on war -- Woman demurs : Clausewitz's widow -- Revolutionary alternative : Marx and Engels -- Science of war and politics : international relations becomes an academic discipline -- 3. Exemplary tales of civic virtue -- Women and the Civil War -- Southern women : my country right and wronged -- Northern women : our truth goes marching on -- First World War : my nation-state, of thee I shout -- Popular nationalism -- America becomes the United States -- 4. Attempt to disarm civic virtue -- Christian conundrum : from pacifists to reluctant warriors -- Just war, holy war, and the witness of peace -- Augustine in his time -- Middle ages and the crusades -- Protestant nation-state -- Pacifism -- Female privatization : the beautiful soul -- Implications of the just-war tradition -- Catholic controversies : the bishops' 1983 pastoral letter -- Just war as political philosophy : Michael Walzer -- Modern dilemma -- Part 2. Life Givers / Life Takers : History's Gender Gap -- 5. Women : the ferocious few / the noncombatant many the historic cleavage -- Female group violence -- Ferocious few -- Woman fighter in the American Revolution -- Hell hath no fury : a story of female revenge -- Female fighters in groups : resistance, regulars, terrorists -- Noncombatant many -- Exemplary tale of a noncombatant: Eleanor Roosevelt -- Collective noncombatant virtue : what did you do in the good war, mommy? -- Aggressive mother : Kill them for me -- 6: Men : the militant many / the pacific few the militant many -- Pacific few -- Compassionate warrior : wartime sacrifice -- Literature war -- First world war : woman's voice / men's lives -- Vietnam : the veterans speak -- Structures of experience : the good soldier / the good mother -- 7. Neither Warriors Nor Victims : Men, Women, And Civic Life -- Liberal conscience -- Uncertain trumpet : feminism's war with war -- Historic peace campaigns -- Woman as peace activist, woman as secret outsider : Jane Addams and Virginia Woolf -- Feminism as mobilization : states of war, promises of peace -- Woman as warriors : you're in the army now -- Beyond war and peace -- Rhetorical practices -- Lesson of America : Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr -- Problem with peace -- Breaking the deadlock (of war's mobilized language) -- Notes -- Index.